For many, New Years is a time for making resolutions. For me, it’s a great time for reflecting on what I’ve accomplished in the past year and setting intentions and goals for the new year to come in terms of nature study. Below is a run down of how I did on my 2019 goals and what I hope to accomplish in 2020. My goals for 2019 included: 1. Post to Seashore to Forest Floor regularly. — I managed to post…
This week marked our 3rd snowfall of the season, and winter technically doesn’t even start for another week (December 21st). The cold weather, snowy trails, and depressingly early sunsets have most people going from home to work (or school) and back again with little to no time spent outside in nature. But with a little planning and a slightly different approach spending time outside, even on cold winter days, it can still be enjoyable. Below I’ve compiled a list of…
One of the most common symbols of Thanksgiving is the Wild Turkey. Here are some fun and interesting Wild Turkey facts you can share around the dinner table and impress your family and friends: Wild turkeys and domestic turkeys are the same species: Meleagris gallopavo. A group of turkeys is called a “rafter”. Adult males are called “toms”, while a juvenile male is called a “jake”; adult females are called “hens”, while a young female is called a “jenny”; and…
I’m not going to lie. I’m incredibly excited by all the signs of spring I’ve been coming across lately. But I’m also trying to take in as much as I can of some of our winter visitors, like this Common Goldeneye (Bucephala clangula), before they migrate back north to their breeding grounds in the boreal forests of Canada and Alaska. During the winter, Common Goldeneyes frequent shallow coastal bays, estuaries, harbors and ponds around Cape Cod, and throughout much of…
Although Saturday’s weather forced the rescheduling of the Upper Cape Naturalists Club’s winter bird walk, I ended up getting antsy prior to the end of the snow storm and decided to head out for a walk anyway. Tucking my binoculars inside my jacket to shield them from the majority of the wet snow that continued to fall, I set off down the Sagamore Hill trail at Scusset Beach State Reservation. On the edge of the trail, motionless in the grass,…
Males are distinctly marked with a black head, neck, chest and back, and a clear white and gray patch on their sides. Despite their name, however, the ring-necked duck’s most visibly distinctive “ring” is a white ring around an otherwise dark gray and black bill. While I personally would have named this bird a “ring-billed duck”, its common name, as well as its scientific name “collaris,” actually refer to the difficult to see dark chestnut-colored collar on its black neck….
You may have noticed that I don’t often write about birds in my blog. This is not because I don’t see them, or that I don’t find them interesting, but because lacking any serious camera equipment, I so rarely get even a half-way decent photo of a bird. Occasionally, however, a bird comes close enough and is cooperative enough to photograph with nothing more than an iPhone camera. Some places are known for “bolder” birds and the Cape Cod National…
For many, New Years is a time for making resolutions. For me, it’s a great time for reflecting on what I’ve accomplished in the past year and setting intentions and goals for the new year to come in terms of nature study. Below is a run down of how I did on my 2018 goals and what I hope to accomplish in 2019. My goals for 2018 included: Post to Seashore to Forest Floor regularly. — I managed to post new…
If there’s one bird I can almost guarantee to see every day from my house, it’s a turkey vulture (Cathartes aura). And while most people are familiar with their high soaring flights, I have been luckily enough to catch them at an entirely different activity: waking up. Almost every morning over the last couple months, as my dog and I are taking our early morning walk, the turkey vultures in my neighborhood are only just starting to stir from their…
Northern cardinals (Cardinalis cardinalis) are a common backyard feeder bird. But while the male’s bright red feathers make this a hard species to overlook, this is the first northern cardinal nest I’ve ever seen. This is likely due to the fact that although they tend to build their nests low to the ground (1 to 15 feet high), northern cardinal nests are generally wedged into a fork of small branches in a thick shrub or tangle of vines, where it…